Blenders

Blenders are structures used to mix or emulsify solid food particles (Bellis 2010). They are also used in the labs for the same purposes. They are good structures to use during the study of structures since their structural arrangement describe their work. Some of them are manual while others have been in the recent past been fitted with electric motors.

Bridges are structures used to cross over large bodies such as water and valleys (David 2005). Their different structures consist of several forms of forces acting against each other to give the whole structure the desired stability. Since some of them are suspended over long distances, they require enough strength to support the weight they carry without collapsing. Their structural forms are vital in determining their strengths and the amount of weight they can support at the same time.

A Fruit Juice Blender and an Arch Bridge

A fruit juice blender is a structure used to mix different fruits and non solid parts of the whole mixture. It is composed of a blade that swirls the liquids and cuts them into the desired sizes. This ensures that the resultant juice is smooth. In manual blenders, there is a combination of wheels that ensure that there is the movement of the blade, controlled from the outside (Bellis 2010). The person making the juice revolves the main wheel that is attached to the slave wheel. The slave wheel moves the blade. The slave wheel is usually smaller than the master wheel hence a single revolution of the master wheel results into a high speed and increased number of turns of the slave wheel and consequently the blade.

An arch Bridge is used to cross over long distances between water bodies. A good example is the Solkan Bridge in Slovenia which is 720ft in length (Charles 2003). It has abutments on each end that supports the rest of the structure. Usually made of steel bars, it has zigzagged walls that prevents it from bulging downwards (David 2005). The abutments are perpendicular to the whole structure and form the main support of the bridge off the ground and above the water body. The rails on the sides cross to reduce tension forces between the upper bars and the lower bars. This way, the bridge cannot bulge downwards under a certain limit of weight on it.

Compare and contrast the structures

These two types of structures are different in almost all ways. Despite both of them being used to reduce the effort that one uses to accomplish certain tasks, they share no structural similarities. Among the similarities is that they are both static and there is no need for any of them to move to perform its tasks. Some of the differences are that while arch bridges are fully static and consist of no moving parts; fruit blenders have a moving blade that swirls the mixture. This is among the major differences between the larger category of blenders and bridges which is based on their uses.

Size and shape between the two groups of structures is another major difference. Bridges are usually large and support varied weights that range from people weights to large trucks and other heavy machinery. Blenders on the other hand handle little amounts of the ingredients that are used in a given recipe. Therefore, while bridges are based on weights, blenders are based on quantities such as volume. The two classes of structures can therefore be said to sharply contrast with little or no similarities at all.

Conclusions

Blenders are simple structures but their movements are important in the performance of their respective tasks. The movements of the master wheel and slave wheel are the most important features where the slave wheel is supposed to be very quick in order to ensure that there is quick swirling of the liquids. The structure of an arch bridge is also interesting to understand. The material used on the floor of the bridge is not very important. The most important of these is the crossed or zigzagged material on the ‘walls’ of the bridge (Charles 2003). They absorb most of the force from the weight exerted on the bridge. The two classes of structures are therefore different in almost all ways but their structures show unrivalled creativity.